"you
must excuse my sister" · "he could be excused for feeling that he was
born at the wrong time"

·overlook or forgive (a fault or offense)

So,
I was watching Pretty Little Liars on Netflix and one of the characters said, “don’t make excuses for her;
it’s demeaning.”
And it led me to thinking a lot about instances where excuses have come up in
mental health – in my mental
health. I think that people in general are pretty much notorious for forever
providing excuses for their behaviours, attitudes, thoughts, and feelings; no
matter what they are. Positive or negative. ‘Right’ or ‘wrong.’ No matter what
the situation.

The
first time I experienced a person making an excuse was when I finally began to
question my abuser and actually start to wonder whether what he was doing was
as normal as he said it was. His excuse? “You deserve it.” And for eight years,
I believed him. It took hours of Trauma Therapy, Psychology, medication, and
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy to make me realize that this actually wasn’t the
case. I learnt that no one deserves to be hurt in that way. I think that – to a
certain degree – his excuse was normal/expectedreasonable? I may have only been young at the time, but he was a
grown adult – he definitely knew that what he was doing was wrong. He just
continued to do it… I think that a part of his excuse was that he was blaming
me for the abuse. But the hardest part? The hardest part of his excuse was that
it gave me hope. That sounds twisted, right? Like, how could I find a positive
feeling from this?

During
that time in my life, everything was so surreal that I honestly wondered whether
the abuse was even happening! So, his excuse made it real; because you can’t
excuse something that hasn’t happened! It’s kind of the opposite. To excuse his
behavior meant he was acknowledging/admitting that it’d happened. And my stupid
sixteen-year-old brain thought that the next natural step was an apology. I’d
somehow twisted his excuse into the hope of an apology. And as strong as his
denials to the Police have been, I still held onto those excuses and that hope.
I think that it has only been in recent years that I have begun to accept I
probably will never get that apology.

When
I was at my most poorly and self-harming – sometimes four or five times a week
– I found myself regularly excusing my actions to an entire range of people.
People like my Mum, my friends, my family, the Police, Nurses, Doctors,
Paramedics… It seemed like I owed an excuse to every person in the entire
world. Because it felt like everyone else was enjoying their life and making
the most of it – respecting it, even – and there I was; actively trying to end
my own.

Trying
to explain to people that the trauma I went through when I was younger was one
of the largest influences on my self-harm was exhausting. But it was nothing
compared to trying to explain how voices that only I could hear were another
large reason for my self-harm. I mean, how can you possibly do these two things
justice?!

But
recognizing the triggers for my self-harm was just the beginning of things… now
I knew them, I had to decide whether or not to tell others about them. I faced
the conviction that in doing so, my trauma would become an excuse for my own
actions. Naturally, I was determined to distance myself from what I’d gone
through and this felt like there was no escaping it.

Another
thing I couldn’t escape were the excuses of professionals. Their ineptitudes
and mistakes were rarely apologized for and mostly given excuses for. “It was
just an error in communication” was the most popular excuse. I think that the
lack of apologies and acknowledgements from professionals was a huge factor in
my lack of respect for them. I think that the attitude of my abuser (in that he
used excuses over apologizing) has meant that I hold a great deal of respect
and admiration for those who do apologize and acknowledge their wrong-doing.
With the recent improvements to my local mental health services and the Police,
on the rare occasion that there has been a ‘miscommunication’ I’ve received apologies
and the promise that it’ll be investigated with the assurance that it wouldn’t
happen to anyone else. I guess that’s the final thing I want to discuss about
excuses; providing an excuse for your negative behaviours, actions, attitudes
etc as opposed to providing an apology means that the person doesn’t recognize their
wrong doing and might therefore, continue to repeat it.

So
let’s all try and erase excuses in mental health; nothing positive ever comes
from them.